Governor Beauregard Courtney of Tennessee sat in the tall chair behind the governor's desk and twiddled a paperweight given him, if his recollection was accurate, by the Nashville Rotary Club. His wife, Lucy, a handsome woman whose dark brown hair was just beginning to grey, stood by the door with an armload of packages. "Beauregard, the people moving into that vacant house down on Franklin Road are Negroes," she said indignantly. "I want you to do something about it. The very idea! That close to the mansion!"
"They aren't Negroes," he said patiently. "They're my secretary and her mother. My secretary is a quadroon and her mother's a mulatto. It's convenient to have them live so close, in case I need to do some weekend work at home."
"A quadroon!" Lucy's eyes widened. "Which of your secretaries is a quadroon?"
"Piquette. And don't tell me I shouldn't have employed her. The Negro vote is important in this state, and if I'd hired a full-blooded Negro a lot of the white vote would turn against me."
"Well, I never! You've become more and more of an integrationist ever since you got into politics, Beauregard."
"Maybe I've gained some wisdom and understanding," he replied. "That is not to say I'm an 'integrationist.' I'm still doing my best to get it done slowly and cautiously. But the only way the South could have resisted it was by open revolt, which would have been suicide. And I must say the Southern fears have not been realized, so far."
Lucy sniffed.
"I have to speak at a woman's club meeting tonight," she said, opening the door. "Are you going home now?"
"No, Sergeant Parker will drive you home and come back for me. I'm going to eat downtown and clean up some work in the office tonight."
She left, and Beauregard leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, having just told his wife a lie.
They had no children to be affected by it, but Lucy would never become reconciled to integration. She blamed him for his part in turning the Memphis Governors Conference away from the proposed Pact of Resistance five years ago.
Beauregard had had his doubts about speaking out against resisting the federal government with the threat of force. Now he thought he had done right: war would have been terrible, and the South could not have won such a war. And it was his statesmanship at that conference, and Governor Gentry's lavish praise of it, that had set him up to succeed Gentry as governor.
Beauregard sighed peacefully. He had done right and the world was better for it.
The door opened, and Piquette's golden, black-eyed face peeked around it.
"It's four-thirty, Governor," she said. "Will you want me for anything else?"
"Not just now," he said, smiling.
She smiled back.
"Room 832," she said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. Then she was gone.
Beauregard's blood quickened, but he was disturbed. This that he was going to do was not right. But what other course would a normal man take, when his wife was so estranged that she had become nothing more than a front for the married happiness the people demanded of their governor, a figure-head who lived in another wing of the mansion?
He had met Piquette eight years before, briefly, when he was a staid, climbing Nashville lawyer. Not knowing she was of mixed blood then, he had been drawn to her strongly. He had thought her drawn also to him, but for some reason their paths parted and he had not seen her again until after his election to the governorship.
She had been among a group of applicants for state jobs, and Beauregard had happened to be visiting the personnel office the day she came in. He employed her in the governor's office at once. She was a good secretary.
Nothing untoward had passed between them in that year she had worked as his secretary. In nothing either of them said or did could any members of his staff have detected an incorrect attitude. But there were invitations of the eyes, caresses of the voice ... and a week ago their hands had touched, and clung, and he had found she was willing....
Beauregard heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. Briefly, he felt sorry for Lucy. He would eat supper downtown tonight, but it would be in Room 832.